Woodlands continues planning for new neighborhood

Designs include aquatic center, YMCA facility and 50-acre lake

BETH KUHLES, Chronicle Correspondent

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, September 26, 2006

The gateway to the new Creekside Park Village will include a $10 million park featuring an aquatic center with a pool, a boathouse on a 50-acre lake, a country club tennis center, a satellite YMCA facility, a large outdoor amphitheater and a promenade with retail kiosks.

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Upon entering Creekside Park Village, visitors will be greeted by sweeping landscapes that lead down to a 50-acre lake. The long, narrow waterway will be a central feature in the village. The park and surrounding public spaces, such as a school and church, will echo the theme of the new village, which is a rustic, national park-like setting.

"In some respects, it a little more urban, but it has a lot more neat things going on," said Bob Bruce, a TWA board member and manager of recreational facilities development for The Woodlands Development Co.

Park features

The park will feature a large amphitheater area for community gatherings, similar to Northshore Park in Panther Creek, which hosts the annual Concert-in-the-Park series, the Dragon Boat races and summer movies. The park will be anchored by a large rustic timber and stone pavilion, which will stand 35 feet tall and have a large lawn, playground and picnic areas. Like Northshore, this park will host many community gatherings and will be a second site for a music series, Deretchin said.

"We want this to be a festival place where the community can celebrate festival and holidays," Deretchin said.

Leading from the amphitheater area will be a promenade guiding visitors to the lake and a boathouse. The kiosks are designed to house retail sites, such as ice cream parlors and coffee shops. The area also will have a small pond, designed for activities such as remote control boats.

A new family-style aquatic center is planned on the banks of the lake, with a regular pool, large slide and a "lazy river" component. The pool, the 13th in the community, also will have restrooms and a concession area. A second pool facility is planned in Creekside Park Village should the demand support it.

On one side of the aquatic center will be The Woodlands Country Club Tennis Center and on the opposite side, a satellite YMCA facility is planned. Unlike the other two YMCAs in the community, this one will focus on outdoor adventures.

The site also will have a shared 350-space parking lot, almost four times that available in Northshore Park.

Creekside Park Village will be the seventh village in The Woodlands and the first one located in Harris County. It will be located between Kuykendahl Road and Gosling Road. The development is expected to include 6,400 residences, including single-family homes, custom and estate homes, patio homes, townhomes, condominiums and apartments. It will be part of the Tomball Independent School District.

Project funding

Deretchin said the park should be paid for through a combination of state grants, municipal utility bonds and homeowners association financing. Unlike The Woodlands municipal utility districts, which are located in Montgomery County, the utility districts in Harris County have the ability to issue bonds for recreational opportunities. Deretchin said he hopes to get $4.2 million in municipal utility district bonds for the project.

The Spring Creek park, which will be a 33-mile linear park between Harris and Montgomery counties, also attracted attention from the state, and Deretchin said he expects it will result in more state funding. The project already received $100,000 to build trails along Spring Creek.

An 1,800-acre section of Spring Creek park in Creekside Park Village will provide a seven-mile trail system through The Woodlands for a variety of a activities, including bicycling, bird watching and horseback riding. The gateway park will abut the Spring Creek park and provide a interconnecting trail system throughout the village.

Deretchin said the Spring Creek park in The Woodlands will be named in honor of George Mitchell, the founder of the community.

"The big park will be named the George Mitchell Preserve or Nature Conservancy," Deretchin said. "It is our testimonial to aim for everything he stands for."

Neighborhood area

The Woodlands also unveiled plans for its first small neighborhood park in Creekside Park, which will feature a central pavilion and arbors. It will have a paved plaza as well as playground and picnic area.

Unlike the rest of The Woodlands, which features small neighborhood parks, larger area parks, village level parks with many amenities and community wide parks, offerings in Creekside Park Village will be fewer in number, but larger in scope, Bruce said. The parks will be concentrated in the central part of the village and provide an east-west pedestrian corridor through the community, said Sheila Condon of Clark Condon and Associates, a consultant to the developer.

Condon said the reoccurring message she heard from residents is the need for more natural areas.

"They said there was not enough (areas) left untouched," Condon said. "So we made it a little more rustic and natural, so people can get away from it all."

Construction on homes in the new village is under way at Carlton Woods Creekside, a private gated neighborhood, and new neighborhoods are scheduled to be built from 2008 to 2014. A new age-restricted community, similar to Windsor Lakes, may be built on the west side of Kuykendahl Road by early 2008, said Virgil Yoakum, vice president of residential land sale and development for The Woodlands.

A retail development is planned near Kuykendahl Road for 2008, and the new aquatic center should be ready in time for the 2008 swim season, Yoakum said.

"It's going to be a tremendous asset to this area," said Lloyd Matthews, the TWA board director from Indian Springs.